


the ones you light your fires to keep away

by zozo



Series: Here Comes the First Day [11]
Category: She-Ra and the Princesses of Power (2018)
Genre: Angst, Dreams and Nightmares, F/F, Flashbacks, Hurt/Comfort, Post-Canon, Post-Season/Series 05, Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-01
Updated: 2020-06-01
Packaged: 2021-03-02 19:33:42
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,978
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24482080
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zozo/pseuds/zozo
Summary: Catra has protected Adora from much worse than nightmares.
Relationships: Adora/Catra (She-Ra), Adora/Catra/Glimmer (She-Ra)
Series: Here Comes the First Day [11]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1755943
Comments: 41
Kudos: 446
Collections: the corners of today





	the ones you light your fires to keep away

**Author's Note:**

> This story depicts memories of young teenagers committing graphic acts of violence in self-defence, to prevent adults from sexually assaulting a minor. (No such assault is implied or described.) Please use your best judgement and practice all relevant self-care.

Catra dreams she’s standing on a beach, watching black waves roll over rust-coloured sand. She’s alone on the shore, she knows she is—she looks around and confirms that she is—but the part of her subconscious that always knows exactly how many people are in a room with her insists urgently that she’s not.

The beach is silent. No birds or clouds cross the bruise-hued sky. Icy fishhooks of dread start tugging at Catra’s insides. The moons are rising, but they’re cracked and misshapen, their orbits wildly out of sync. Catra tries to see if there’s anything moving under the water, and realizes she can’t—it’s as opaque as ink.

Someone is screaming her name.

She knows Adora’s voice at once, but with the fluidity of dreams, Catra hears Adora at age 14, gangly and giggly, the same cluster of pimples always breaking out in the same four spots on her right temple. Adora, 14 years old, screaming Catra’s name as she’s about to be dragged out of sight in the Whispering Woods. By defectors, but not rebels—washouts who’d gone AWOL to become bandits, raiding civilian and Horde targets alike.

Catra and Adora had been on a training mission with their fellow cadets. The transport had been ambushed, their instructor Peregrine and the soldier driving killed instantly. The bandits, a foul-mouthed, foul-smelling crew of six, planned to ransom the cadets back to Shadow Weaver—which meant they were as good as dead, Catra had known. Shadow Weaver _might_ pay to get Adora back, but Lonnie and Rogelio and Kyle? Decreasingly likely. And as for Catra… Shadow Weaver was more likely to pay the bandits to keep her than return her.

But all of that had become moot when two of the raiders started dragging Adora away from the rest of the group, their intentions obvious. Catra didn’t even think a complete thought before she’d shattered the nearest thug’s wrist and flipped his particle blaster into her hand, daylight suddenly shining through a sizzling hole in its former owner’s skull. Before he could even fall, Lonnie had sprung to her feet, slamming her freshly-shaved head into the face of the one who’d been binding her with rope, shattering the bone in his nose and driving it up into his brain.

Lonnie’s fatal headbutt was tracked by the same tertiary part of Catra’s mind that heard Rogelio’s roar turn suddenly into a meaty growl, then recede under the wet gurgle of another bandit’s death rattle. A secondary part targeted two more shots with the blaster and the meathead restraining Kyle lost most of what earned him the name, Kyle fleeing towards the safety of Rogelio’s blood-spattered arms and away from the smoking stump of the former meathead’s neck.

Then Catra had thrown the blaster in Lonnie’s general direction and herself, claws first, towards the pair dragging Adora away. They’d barely had time to register the commotion behind them, and had only started to turn around before they dropped Adora entirely, both their hands flying up to their freshly slit throats in vain.

It was over in seconds. Catra had yanked Adora away from the twitching heap of her would-be assailants, smearing their blood everywhere as she’d obsessively checked Adora for injuries. Adora had assured her she was fine, they hadn’t done anything to her, Catra had been fast enough, she was fine, they were all fine, everything was fine.

So why can Catra still hear her screaming?

She’s not 14, making her first kills in the Whispering Woods for the sake of protecting Adora. She’s not being stalked on the shore of a dying world. She’s not holding Adora’s lifeless body under the Heart of Etheria, begging her to stay.

She’s in bed. She’s in Bright Moon. The war is over. The Horde is a memory. And Adora’s right here, in her arms, safe—except she’s having a nightmare of her own.

“Adora,” Catra tries to say at a normal speaking volume, voice still rough as she struggles the rest of the way towards wakefulness. Adora just whimpers and rocks back and forth against Catra, face slack with sleep except for deep creases of distress above her eyebrows. “Catra!” she cries again desperately, not realizing Catra’s the one holding her—the irony tears at Catra’s heart.

“Adora!” she says a little louder, giving her thrashing girlfriend a gentle shake, and then a less gentle one.

“ _Catra!_ ” Adora shrieks right in her face, like she’s not here at all, like she’s watching Catra take another six-storey swan dive behind her eyelids, and fear bubbles up in Catra that she won’t be able to wake her, that Adora’s going to be trapped in her nightmare forever, that Catra will be close enough to touch her terrified lover but never able to reach her—

Catra panics and sinks her teeth into Adora’s shoulder, biting down on the muscle nearly hard enough to draw blood, springing back in horror the instant she realizes what she’s done.

It was a fucked-up feral instinct, but it’s effective—Adora yelps with pain, a surprised, indignant cry that sounds nothing like her frantic screams of a moment earlier. “ _What_ the… C-Catra…?” She reaches up to rub her shoulder—even in the dim moonlight from the window, Catra can clearly see her bite marks in the curve of Adora’s deltoid and feels hot with shame—but soon Adora’s semi-conscious confusion visibly gives way, and Catra can see the dream coming back to her.

Specifically, what Catra sees is Adora’s eyes go wide, then fill with tears, and then her entire face crumbling as she starts to sob. “ _Catra_. Oh Catra, thank you, you’re here, Catra, thank you, I love you, oh my gods, oh my gods I love you, thank you.”

This is heartbreaking—Catra hates what these dreams do to Adora, and she hates that Adora’s grateful she caused her pain—but now that Adora’s at least awake and aware, it’s something Catra can work with. She grabs Adora in a tight hug and lays a cluster of kisses over the impressions left by her teeth, then cups the back of Adora’s head and repositions her so she’s snuggled against Catra’s chest, ear to Catra’s breastbone, so she can listen to the steady beat of Catra’s heart.

“I’m here,” Catra says, grateful she can finally speak in a soft voice. “I’m with you, Adora. We’re safe. We’re in Bright Moon. The war is over, the Horde is gone, I’m right here.”

Adora just keens without words, grabbing two fists full of the bedspread and bringing them to her face to muffle the heart-wrenching sound. Catra pulls her close, mumbling soothing nonsense into the top of Adora’s head, letting her terrified, exhausted girlfriend cry herself out.

It only takes a few minutes. Catra finds a relatively clean handkerchief in the nightstand and hands it to Adora so she can blow her nose, then settles back against the pillow, cradling Adora as close to her as possible.

“Wanna talk about it?” Catra asks quietly.

Sometimes Adora does, sometimes she doesn’t. Tonight she does. “A little,” she says in a small voice. “You had the failsafe.”

It’s all she has to explain.

“And let me guess,” Catra says gently, “I didn’t also happen to be She-Ra in this scenario.”

Adora shakes her head, whimpering. Her voice gets even smaller. “I had to watch you die.”

“Shhhh,” Catra says, “shhhhhh. Listen to this.” She pulls Adora back to her chest. “Listen, Adora. Listen to my heart. I didn’t die. I’m alive. Listen.”

Adora listens. She listens for so long Catra thinks she’s fallen back asleep, but then she speaks.

“I couldn’t follow you.”

Catra’s not sure if they’re still talking about the same dream. “What do you mean?” she asks.

“In the—I dreamed it was you. Who took the failsafe. Who went into the Heart and d-died. And I couldn’t—the Heart went dormant, and there was only one failsafe—I couldn’t…”

 _Kill yourself after I died?_ Catra refuses to say aloud. The thought twists in her guts like something razor-sharp and barbed.

“Shhhhh,” she says instead. “You don’t need to follow me anywhere, Adora, I’m right here, and I’m not leaving you. Not ever.”

“Not ever,” Adora repeats. “You’d better not ever. I know what it’s like to lose you now. I can’t go through that again, Catra, I can’t.”

“You won’t have to.” Catra will remind Adora of this every hour of every day of the rest of their lives, if that’s how often Adora needs to hear it. Catra definitely needs to say it from time to time, just because she can, just to spit in the face of all the forces that tried to keep them apart. “I’m where I belong now, Adora. I’m with you. And I’m not. going. anywhere.”

“Promise?” The tiny quiver in Adora’s voice hits Catra like a punch in the stomach.

She squeezes Adora tight. “I promise.”

After a few more minutes, Adora wriggles up to eye-level and kisses Catra softly on the lips. “Thank you,” she whispers.

It would sound weird to say “thank you” back, so Catra doesn’t, but she doesn’t know how to tell Adora that cuddling and consoling her through a nightmare feels like the most extravagant privilege Catra’s ever been granted. To be the one Adora turns to. To be the one she needs. It’s above any honour she can imagine, that she gets to be here for Adora.

Adora sighs. “I’m glad Glimmer’s not sleeping over with us tonight.”

Now that’s… sort of the opposite of how Catra expected her to feel. Especially since Catra feels like she wouldn’t have minded the extra pair of hands tonight—one more hand to comfort Adora, and one for Catra to clutch herself. “Really?” she asks.

“I… I don’t know,” Adora admits with a shrug, “maybe not. I just—haven’t had a nightmare like this in front of her yet, and I guess I’m… enjoying the part of our relationship before she learns how fucked-up and broken I am.”

Adora’s self-deprecation moves through Catra like an electric shock. It even wakes Melog, who lets out a low _mrrrow_ of protest from the end of the bed, both at Adora’s specific sentiment and how _loud_ their emotions are being right now.

“You,” Catra says in a thin, measured voice, “are not fucked up, Adora. You are not broken. That’s not what happened to you, Adora, and that’s not what you are. It’s not what I think you are. And it’s not what Glimmer would ever think you are. Are you kidding me? Glimmer thinks you’re the strongest person she’s ever met! She told me herself, literally in those words. She wasn’t talking about She-Ra, either. And if Glimmer had been here tonight, she wouldn’t have seen _anything_ to change her mind.”

Adora sighs a long, unhappy sigh, but she nods. Even if she doesn’t quite feel it herself, she knows she’ll lose this argument with Catra. Just like she always does. Just like she hopes she always will.

“Were you dreaming?” Adora asks. “When I woke you?” Catra hesitates, and Adora notices. “You weren’t having a nightmare too, were you? Are _you_ all right? It’s okay for us to support each other, you know, you don’t have to—”

“I know! Adora, I know. I’m fine, I’m completely fine,” Catra says. “It wasn’t great, but it wasn’t a nightmare. I was dreaming that you were in trouble. And that I had to save you.”

“Oh.” The look of frustration on Adora’s face softens instantly. “Well, I _was_ in trouble.” She kisses Catra’s mouth again. “And you did save me.” Another kiss—then another, and another, and she sighs, resting her forehead against Catra’s, peace slowly trickling back in to her heart.

“My hero,” says Adora, and she means it.


End file.
